Book Review - Drake's Bay

Last week I was reading "Drake's Bay" by Thomas Roberts. [It is an advance readers copy that my wife got from LibraryThing. Her review was so positive, I decided I should give it a try. It has to do with a history professor in San Francisco that lives on a boat with his young wife and gets involved in discovering some logs of Sir Francis Drake's late sixteen century voyages.]

Ethan Storey seems to be a fairly laid back California history professor, not intimidated by his colleagues at Berkley, and enjoys his time on his wooden sailing boat, the Drake, that his father, also a history professor, built as Ethan was growing up, after his mother had died. His father left Ethan the boat, and little else, when he died, years ago. Ethan takes on a part-time consulting job to catalogue a large, old collection of books, across the street from Berkley, owned by a rich family based in Antwerp, the Willems. It turns out the the collection has been the center of a struggle between the Willems and the Ballentines, a wealthy family based in Berkley, since the late 1930s. Ethan and Kay are not married; but living together on the boat in an interesting relationship that evolves along with the mystery. She is a property attorney, it turns out, working for the Ballentines.

The book does not read like a mystery at first, it is just an interesting story... although the professor who earlier had worked at cataloguing this same collection turns up murdered in New York City... New and old relationships are revealed among numerous twists and turns... and we end up with an exciting, exceptional, satisfying "mystery book" conclusion.

I highly recommend this book to any mystery enthusiast.

[Included in Cym's April 13 Book Review Party Wednesday - Thanks!] 


Happy Reading! ;-)

Dr. Bill
http://stores.lulu.com/drbillshare

Drake's Bay